"Teaching is the royal road to learning"
About this Quote
“Teaching is the royal road to learning” flatters the teacher, then quietly dethrones them. Jessamyn West isn’t handing out a gold star for pedagogy; she’s pointing to a backdoor truth about how knowledge actually sticks. The phrase “royal road” nods to that old fantasy of a privileged shortcut, a direct route reserved for insiders. West flips it: the most efficient path to understanding isn’t special access, it’s responsibility. The moment you have to explain something to another person, your vague familiarity gets audited. Gaps show. Assumptions wobble. You’re forced to turn private hunches into public reasoning.
West, a novelist who wrote with moral clarity about ordinary lives, frames learning as social, not solitary. There’s subtext here about humility: teaching isn’t the performance of mastery, it’s exposure to your own incompleteness. Standing at the front of a room (or simply helping a friend) makes you accountable to structure, sequence, and empathy. You can’t hide behind “I get it” when someone else doesn’t.
The context matters: West lived through an era that professionalized expertise and elevated credentialed authority. Her line cuts against that grain. It suggests education isn’t a one-way transfer from the enlightened to the ignorant, but a loop where the teacher is also being taught by the act itself. The aphorism works because it’s both pragmatic and mildly subversive: the crown goes to whoever is willing to explain, revise, and be corrected.
West, a novelist who wrote with moral clarity about ordinary lives, frames learning as social, not solitary. There’s subtext here about humility: teaching isn’t the performance of mastery, it’s exposure to your own incompleteness. Standing at the front of a room (or simply helping a friend) makes you accountable to structure, sequence, and empathy. You can’t hide behind “I get it” when someone else doesn’t.
The context matters: West lived through an era that professionalized expertise and elevated credentialed authority. Her line cuts against that grain. It suggests education isn’t a one-way transfer from the enlightened to the ignorant, but a loop where the teacher is also being taught by the act itself. The aphorism works because it’s both pragmatic and mildly subversive: the crown goes to whoever is willing to explain, revise, and be corrected.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
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